Russell Hoban quotations

This is a list of quotations from Russell Hoban's books used in the annual SA4QE fan event. Click on the novel title for details of that book, or on the "read more" link for details of who chose the quotation and where they left it.

What passes for reality seems to me mostly a load of old nonsense invented by not very inventive minds. The reality that interests me is strange and flickering and haunting.

Sometimes in the small hours of the morning, while [X] sleeps peacefully beside me, I sit up in the dark, feeling myself and the world moving from the known to the unknown...

What passes for reality seems to me mostly a load of old nonsense invented by not very inventive minds. The reality that interests me is strange and flickering and haunting.

"The real thing is always more than you're ready for."

As we ate and drank it seemed to both of us that the evening was shaping nicely. I couldn’t remember a time when I had drawn so well or felt so good; I wondered if I’d ever draw that well and feel that good again. Happiness can be unsettling, like catching a baby that someone has thrown out of a window.

I exist, said the mirror.
What about me? said Kleinzeit.
Not my problem, said the mirror.

'The world-child has been told that this is a world,' said the head [of Orpheus], 'and it believes it; it is the energy of this belief that binds the world together. The world-child holds in its mind the idea of every single thing: root and stone, tree and mountain, river and ocean and every living thing. The world-child holds in its mind the idea of woman and man, the idea of love.'

"Perhaps this world that's in us, this world that we're in, was never meant to be fixed and permanent; perhaps it's only one of a continuous succession of world-ideas passing through the world-mind. And we are, all of us, the passing and impermanent perceivers of it."

Russell Hoban ~ From the Novel ‘Fremder'

In the train, Max remembers not to think out loud. People look at him and move away anyhow. "What music were we talking about?" he says to his mind.
"Hang on," says his mind. "I'm giving you a picture."

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